Your Ecological Address (YEA) — System Specification

@techreport{hamilton2026your, author = {Hamilton, Michael P., Ph.D.}, title = {Your Ecological Address (YEA) — System Specification}, institution = {Canemah Nature Laboratory}, year = {2026}, number = {CNL-TN-2026-025}, month = {february}, url = {https://canemah.org/archive/document.php?id=CNL-TN-2026-025}, abstract = {Your Ecological Address (YEA) is a web application that transforms geographic coordinates into comprehensive ecological profiles by querying 20+ geospatial and biodiversity APIs in parallel. Given any latitude and longitude on Earth, the system returns a structured ecological identity spanning terrain morphometry, bedrock geology and stratigraphy, climate classification, multi-decadal climate history, water balance and evapotranspiration, ecoregion taxonomy, land cover characterization, vegetation community classification, conservation-listed species, land protection status, multi-taxon biodiversity inventories, seasonal phenology, recent avian field observations, and acoustic bird detections. The interface is organized as a field guide with six thematic panels — Identity, Curated Discovery, Physical Place, Ecological Setting, Living Systems, and Field Notebook — each containing expandable data cards. A Curated Places layer provides enriched ecological profiles for 1,000+ field stations, nature reserves, and research sites across six continents, drawn from OBFS, UC NRS, LTER, NEON, ILTER, and The Nature Conservancy networks. Vision-enabled narratives combine 3D terrain screenshots with ecological data scaffolds, enabling Claude Sonnet to synthesize interpretive prose that integrates spatial reasoning with factual grounding. A modular JavaScript frontend (twelve modules on the `FG` namespace) communicates with a PHP backend using parallel API fetching (`curl\_multi`) and MySQL caching with source-appropriate TTL values. A monitoring widget system displays live sensor data from Tempest weather stations, BirdWeather acoustic monitors, Ecowitt sensors, panoramic cameras (Pannellum), and stratification arrays. An AI enrichment pipeline uses Claude with web\_search to research and populate curated place profiles. A privacy-respecting analytics system tracks usage patterns without IP logging or cookies. **Planned near-term extensions** add an Atmosphere panel (satellite sky imagery from GOES/Himawari geostationary platforms + 72-hour forecast arc) as a fifth panel between Physical Place and Ecological Setting. A four-layer platform architecture is in design: the existing field guide (Guide), a new data science workbench (Lab), a place-based publication layer (Journal), and the existing document archive (Archive). YEA serves as a standalone ecological reference tool at yea.earth, a place-enriched discovery platform for natural areas worldwide, a metadata engine for the SCOPE panoramic photograph database, and a prototype component of the Macroscope integrated environmental observatory platform.} }